Sunday, June 21, 2009

back to basics

Lumberjack: 2, Namrita: 0

I did make it to the starting line but did not finish. I hate that. Long story short, I took off near the front and red-lined for the first part of the first lap until I finally got my heart rate to settle down. My left side TFL, glutes, and hamstrings felt really really tight which was making me nervous so I spent most of the short climbs in the saddle hoping things would loosen up. My first lap was on pace for a 9 hour day, which was OK with me (I think the winner, Betsy, finished in around 8:20). About 1/2 way through lap 2 is when I started feeling my knee twinge so I immediately started soft pedaling the flats, walking the climbs, and railing the downhills. Enough is enough with trying to "ride through the pain"..as embarrassing as it is, I decided I would rather DNF than keep extending my stupid injury out any longer. I don't think I did any further damage to it since I stopped riding as soon as it started bothering me, and I still got a 50 mile training day in.

Good job to all the cabin mates for a stellar race (Jeff Schalk, Chris Eatough, Roger Masse, Eddie, and Danielle Musto).

As soon as I get back to Georgia, I'm starting the singlespeed build project on the Rotwild R.R2 hardtail. I do find it interesting that I can go 2 years with doing pretty much only 12-24 hour solo races on a singlespeed and have NO knee issues at all. But, now that I'm on gears I can't seem to shake it. I must have better technique out of the saddle. Plus, I like singlespeeding better. So, I'm going back to basics...ONE GEAR BABY! The Rotwild R.R2 full suspension is on it's way, too, so at least I'll have the option to run geared at places like Pine Log, Tibbs, etc. Sounds like a plan to me.